


For a Moment

by hayleyisbored



Series: Carpe Noctem [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Friendship, Grief, I can only say sorry, Love, M/M, Mourning, Romance, Sadness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-02
Updated: 2019-01-02
Packaged: 2019-10-02 12:12:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17263997
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hayleyisbored/pseuds/hayleyisbored
Summary: He'd lost his heart well over a decade ago and he hasn't been able to retrieve it since. It had gone AWOL shortly after James' death.





	For a Moment

17 Years Later

Remus hears the intruder before he sees them. 

He'd fallen asleep in his armchair, pulled right up close to the fire to feel its dying warmth before he dozed off without meaning to, slipper-clad feet perilously close to the ashes. It was the crash that awoke him, the unmistakable sound of his favourite mug flying from its station on the little table beside him and smashing into pieces on the stone floor, cold tea seeping into the ratty rug so ancient that he can no longer recall where it came from.

Remus snatches up his wand from where it's slipped down the side of the cushion, gripping the handle tight so that he can point it at the haggard form standing in the middle of his living room. He doesn't get a chance to open his mouth.

" _Expelliarmus!_ " 

_Oh, bugger_ , Remus thinks in a blind panic as his wand is flung out of his hand and across the room. He glumly watches it clatter away beneath that bloody dresser he's been meaning to get rid of, leaving him vulnerable and utterly terrified and perhaps worst of all, at this stranger's mercy in his _pyjamas_. Remus doesn't think much of the timing but he's sensible enough not to say it aloud.

"Christ," curses the intruder, despairing but bewilderingly amused. "When was the last time you actually duelled anyone? I have to admit, I'm a little disappointed. I thought you'd at least put up a fight."

The hoarse croak is not enough to disguise the sound of a voice Remus recognises in an instant. It's a voice that could still make his knees give out if he were standing, make his breath become stuck in his throat and refuse to budge. No degree of separation has managed to quell Remus' devotion, nor the rush of raw affection that threatens to pull him back under so that he'll be as enchanted as he ever was; he'd lost his heart well over a decade ago and he hasn't been able to retrieve it since. It had gone AWOL shortly after James' death.

"S-Sirius? Is that you?" he adds, only because he feels that it's the proper thing to say in this sort of circumstance. Best to double check who might be hiding in the dark corners of your home.

"Hold on - _Incendio._ "

The fireplace bursts into flames and Remus is only just able to yank his feet away before his poor slippers can catch fire.

Sirius Black shakes the tangled hair from his face, finally illuminated in flickering orange light. That handsome face has been ruthlessly chipped away at over time; the ruddy cheeks and red lips and clear skin are all gone, gaunt shadows and bruised eyes left behind in their stead. Remus bridles over that, thinking frankly adolescent thoughts to himself about how criminal it is that Sirius has been stripped so efficiently of his beauty, that all its grace and dignity have been stolen away for nothing. 

Remus wants to take a hold of Sirius and scream, to beg to know who let this happen to him - to break down into tears by realising _he_ did.

But Sirius is grinning at him with that same bright enthusiasm and tenderness which had doomed Remus to many a pining daydream all those years ago, the sheer incandescence of him stirring up those stagnant feelings in Remus as if they'd settled somewhere deep inside his wounded heart and waited with hope to be of use again someday.

"Merlin," Sirius laughs, his gaze drinking up every inch of his stunned friend. It feels like a touch to Remus. "I forgot you have that moustache now."

What must Sirius see in him, he wonders? A man of thirty-five gone to seed far too early: chestnut waves have given way to streaks of glinting silver, the lines on his face deep and certainly plentiful, fading scars new to Sirius' old eyes and tearing apart the familiar pathways which Sirius used to leisurely kiss his way across when they both once glowed with youth and innocence.

"You've finally aged into your soul, Remus."

Remus blanches, turning away from the firelight, shame and self-consciousness eating him alive. "I know how I look. I know that I - "

Sirius interrupts him, his words somehow softer than his smile. "I meant that as a compliment, Moony. I meant to say that it suits you." 

"But - but why - why are you - "

"Here?" Sirius offers, his eyes shuttering under some great burden that Remus is yet to learn.

"Yes. I, well - I didn't expect to see you."

It's been a year since they last spoke in the Shrieking Shack, face to face or otherwise. The opportunity for conversation was cut short by explanations of Peter's betrayal, cut shorter still by the full moon. By the time Remus came to the next morning, Sirius was long gone before Remus had the chance to say even a tenth of the things he wished to, though half of it was hardly appropriate to declare whilst in the company of three teenagers and Severus Snape and in an especially strenuous situation.

That had been that. Remus had no way to contact Sirius, who couldn't risk regular correspondence while he was on the run anyway; Harry had been the sole exception and Remus would never blame Sirius for that. All he could do was agonise over every decision he'd made when he was younger, foolish and insecure. Every secret fear he'd never had the courage to speak, every wedge that Sirius drove forcibly between them until Remus didn't know what to do with all that _heartache_ , the both of them harbouring their own simmering anger and hurt which ran deep enough to do more damage than any spell could muster.

They'd been wrong. So breathtakingly wrong that Remus could laugh if only to keep himself from spiralling into a black hole.

"Something has happened..."

"What?" Remus asks with urgency, sitting up in his seat. "Is it Harry? Is he alright?"

Sirius comes to kneel in front of Remus but he doesn't reach out to touch him. Remus can't help himself, he can't help but lean forwards - closer - until his eyes are level with Sirius', until he's all but ready to tilt headfirst into those grey eyes and back into his arms. He's itching to close that scrap of space between them. He feels as if he's fifteen again, yearning for a person he has no right to want but he's older now and wiser for it. He holds back.

"He's back," Sirius breathes. "Voldemort is back."

Remus goes very still. He can't bring himself to ask how, he's even more frightened to ask Sirius why _he_ knows. Still, Remus' brain is already leafing through information he's gleaned from between the lines of the Daily Prophet: Harry, his name fluttering out of the Goblet of Fire despite his age, forced to take part in the Triwizard Tournament. Why, the third task took place this very evening. Only now does he read the tense lines of Sirius' shoulders and recognise their hidden message.

"Is Harry okay?!"

"He's alive." Sirius says, not exactly answering his question.

"Oh god." Remus' exhale rattles its way past his lips. "It's going to be like last time, isn't it?"

Sirius nods, "I think it will be - with one exception."

"What exception?"

"This time I won't stop trusting you."

A dam seems to break on the strength of those words. Every confession they'd been unable to pronounce in the Shrieking Shack the previous year, all the confusion during the first war when their little London flat felt even smaller, every single unsaid thing between them pours out into Remus' cottage, until the walls are fit to burst from all the grief and pain and regret.

"I thought you'd betrayed us. Sirius, I - "

"Don't," Sirius says sharply, eyes shining even in the dimly lit living room. "Don't do that to yourself. _I_ thought it was you. We were both mistaken."

"How did we let that happen to us? How could we have - I didn't know what to do, you shut me out and I thought - I - that maybe I stopped being e-enough for - "

The last few weeks before James and Lily were murdered were some of the worst that Remus has had to endure. Before things became bad, Sirius would return in the early hours of the morning from doing Merlin knows what for the Order. Remus would wait, his taut body sagging in relief when Sirius' side of the mattress would dip and he would crawl beneath the blankets to curl up against Remus' back, the smell of rain still clinging to his skin and his cold lips brushing against Remus' bare shoulder. Sirius always disappeared on missions but the time between them grew shorter and shorter all the while. He began to change. Where Sirius had once been warm and easy with affection, he grew distant in all manner of ways. He could barely look at Remus, he avoided touching him and would slide out from beneath Remus' reaching fingers. 

Until one day, Sirius just stopped coming back. 

Remus' whole world ended with a note on their kitchen table. There were no more dips in the mattress and Remus started to thrum with tension at every waking moment, until it began to seep into his nights as well. Sleep rarely came after that. 

Eventually, the paranoia set in. He replayed every argument he and Sirius had ever had, he tore his hair out thinking about all those late night missions and long days gone. What if Sirius was the double agent? What if he'd finally snapped under the pressure and had been feeding information back to Voldemort for months now, right under Remus' nose? If anyone was likely to lose control, it would be Sirius.

And then, inexplicably - _impossibly_ , James was gone. Soon after, just as he always had, Peter followed.

Remus knew nothing about the Potter's Secret Keeper. He spent the subsequent years wrestling with himself, trying to understand when the man he loved had lost all sense of who he was and switched sides. It had taken all this time to figure out his heart had been breaking for the wrong friend. Remus had been so preoccupied fighting the roiling ocean between he and Sirius and his own exhausting, private assignments for the Order that he never noticed the effect that the strain was having on Peter. He failed to see every sign that something was amiss with his increasingly twitchy friend.

"Remus." A frightful sob tears out from Sirius - terrible, an awful wrench to Remus' heart - and he has to take great gulps of air to steady himself, to bring himself back from the brink of hysteria. Only now does he reach out to clasp both of Remus' hands in his own skeletal ones, and Remus is relieved to find that they have not at least lost their warmth. "I'm so sorry. I'm so, _so_ sorry that I abandoned you. I let you down."

"No, you - "

Sirius' grip on Remus' hands tighten, squeezing. "I did. I said to you once that I wanted to be stuck with you for life but I broke that promise. I left you all alone in that miserable flat in the middle of a _fucking war_ because I couldn't see. Everything got twisted up inside my head."

"It was too much to take on. We were so young - all that pressure heaped upon us, all the time we had to spend apart. I missed you even when you were lying next to me, Sirius, nevermind when I was sent undercover to the werewolves."

That had been a whole other experience. Remus hated every second of being alone in those underground sewers, where the shunned werewolves shunned society right back. He spent months at a time with them, slowly gaining their trust, becoming embroiled within the complicated politics of being a part of an unofficial pack. Fights would break out often, full moon or not. He'd tried to keep a low profile but sometimes, the occasion called for involvement, for gnashing teeth and bloodied nails. On those nights, he'd hole up in a quiet tunnel of the sewer with only memories of his friends to keep the tears tenuously at bay.

" _Fuck,_ " Sirius hisses."I was such an idiot. If I'd just talked to you, we might have figured out that Peter - that he was - "

"I used to wonder that myself." Remus says quietly. "When I learnt that it was he and not you who had sold out James and Lily, I used to berate myself: I should have talked to him more, I should have made more of an effort to sit down with him and keep him in check. What if I'd been able to reach Peter before he'd gone too far? But then I realised."

"What?"

"Pete loved James best of all." Remus presses a shaky hand to his forehead, drooping in his armchair. "If he was in so deep that he was willing to betray even him, then there's nothing we could have said or done."

"He was a coward. A worthless coward to do that!" Sirius clutches at his hair, tears dripping steadily from the end of his nose. "Oh god, I miss James so fucking much, Moony. I miss him so much that it hurts to breathe sometimes. I can't get the sight of him out of my head, I haven't been able to stop thinking about the _emptiness_ of him lying there in all that rubble. I couldn't stop shaking him, Hagrid had to pull me off him in the end." he sits back, staring down at his hands with wide, unseeing eyes. "I couldn't stop myself..."

"I should have been there for you," Remus whispers, letting his own tears flow freely. "I should have believed in you, too."

Sirius shakes his head, resolute. "It wouldn't have mattered, I'd have still gone after Peter. I would have hurt even you to get to him." Sirius laughs with as much fervour as he would if he'd just heard a bad joke. "Guess me and Pete had something in common, after all: we would have done anything if it concerned James." 

"And now?"

"Now?"

"Are you going to go after Peter?"

Sirius barks out another laugh, voice reedy. "No - _no_. Harry doesn't want me to kill him so I'm making a concerted effort to not search for him."

Remus feels a weight drop off his shoulders at that. He'd started to worry, started to imagine Sirius storming back out of Remus' cottage and into the Yorkshire countryside, vowing to find Peter and make him pay. He had begun to fear that this would be a fleeting reunion.

"It's remarkable," Remus says instead. "Harry and James are so alike."

"You know, he told me about everything you did for him last year, Moony. Driving off that Dementor on the train? How you were so patient, your kind words, giving up your free time to help him with conjuring a Patronus. He even managed to summon enough modesty to tell me how you put him in his place when you found out he had the Map. James would be grateful to you for doing that."

"At the time, all I could think about was you getting your hands on it and hunting him down but then - then Harry said he'd seen Peter's name. Everything changed in that moment." Remus confesses, flushing. "I might have come off a little too strongly."

"Nonsense," Sirius tells him sternly. "Harry said you were the best teacher he's ever had."

"He said that, did he?" Remus mumbles, pink still colouring his scarred cheeks.

"Of course he did. I don't doubt it either. Teaching was a perfect fit for you, Remus. I - " Sirius falters - a rare gesture coming from him - ducking his head. "I heard what Snape did to you after I'd left. I guess I screwed that up for you as well." 

"Ah, well - yes. Severus wasn't too happy, I'm afraid. It was all very trying." Remus says sheepishly, clearing his throat. "I'd much rather be unemployed than have you soulless, Sirius. I can't bear the thought of you like that."

"Don't say that. I feel like everything has gone to shit these past several years, I've managed to ruin almost every facet of my life. It seems so unfair that even now, I'm messing stuff up for you too."

"Your...your soul is my favourite thing about you."

Remus doesn't even wish that he could take that back, not even when Sirus' whole body freezes. It's the most either of them have said to allude to where they currently stand. Remus valiantly pushes on.

"You know that I never stopped, don't you? I never stopped loving you. Not once - not ever."

He says it calmly. Some seventeen years ago, he'd admitted his love in a flurry of desperation, crazed in that way which being young and in love can make you. This time, he's had years of being in love with Sirius to bolster the declaration. It's no longer white hot, enough to scold his flesh and boil his blood. This time, it's fused itself into every atom of his body, alive within him.

"I know, Remus." With a heavy sigh, Sirius rests his cheek against Remus' thigh, the feel of soft cotton on his skin. It's so painfully intimate that he has to grip at Remus' knee, squeezing hard to ground himself in this moment, to convince himself that it's real. Remus' hand comes tentatively, sweetly, smoothing its way down his hair and neck. If it weren't for the hollowness in his chest, it would feel like no time has passed."I know. I won't leave you again."

"I - " Remus swallows against the lump in his throat. He proceeds quietly, scratching his chewed down nails along Sirius' scalp. "I'd rather you wouldn't make promises you can't keep, Sirius."

"I'm so sorry for what I did to you." warm spots seep through his pyjama bottoms and Remus knows without looking that Sirius is crying again. "I worked so hard for you to love me."

"You always said that I'd love you. You still have that, if you want it." Remus can hardly get the words out, his throat feels constricted. He casts about for some new subject, his eyes falling on his poor broken mug. "I was quite fond of that mug, you know. Perfect width for dunking biscuits."

Sirius miraculously snorts - albeit thick with snot - shifting back to raise an arched brow at Remus. He casts a quick, businesslike _Reparo_ over the shattered mug fragments as if tears aren't still shining on his cheeks, until all the pieces come together again, for all the world looking as if no harm had ever come to it. Remus is sure that a metaphor is lurking somewhere in those plastered over cracks about him and Sirius but he swiftly ignores that line of thought.

"Well, I could have done _that_ but it's the principle of the thing, isn't it?" Remus teases, grateful to be back on less emotional footing. "Shockingly rude to _Apparate_ right into someone's house without warning them first. I could have cleared away all the breakables. Your aim was never particularly fantastic."

"Oh, so you're turning your nose up at my _Apparition_ , now?" Sirius smiles, rising to his feet to stretch. "If I remember correctly, it took _you_ four goes until you passed your test."

"Excuse you, who thought a walk in the park would be romantic and then expertly _Apparated_ us into that pond? Who scared those ducks half to death?"

"You promised you'd never bring that up again!"

Shameless of them, Remus muses, that they should be _here_ exchanging lighthearted banter when Lord Voldemort is out _there_ somewhere. No longer a whisper of a threat but a fully fledged danger. So much needed to be done but all Remus wants is to sit here and reminisce on happier times with Sirius. 

"So," he says reluctantly. "I presume there's some sort of plan?"

"Dumbledore wants me to round up the old crowd. He told me to lay low here - is that alright?"

"Don't be absurd. You don't have to ask, Sirius. When shall we begin?"

Sirius blinks, "We?"

"I'm coming with you. No - " Remus says when Sirius opens his mouth. "Don't you dare start. I'm coming."

Sirius, for once, doesn't argue. He nods as if to say, _of course. Of_ course _we'll be together_. The inevitability of the two of them. The moon and the stars.

"Tomorrow. We'll start tomorrow."

Remus settles back in his chair, strangely contented for the first time in, well - months. Years. Ironic, he thinks, now that there's a mass murderer on the loose again.

But Sirius is here. For the first time since they were twenty-something's and on the threshold of the very worst years of their lives, it finally feels like Sirius has come back to him. Not simply a shadow of the boy he fell in love with but someone real and warm and tangible. Someone who would hide chocolate bars under pillows and weave stars into constellations at the tips of his fingers and kiss scars into treasures.

Remus would have given anything for that when he felt lost in the dark. He still would.

"I hope you don't mind sharing the bed?" he says, echoing the first time Sirius had shown up unannounced at his house. "I'm afraid I have nowhere else for you to go, I'm rather limited on space here."

"If you want me." Sirius says, grinning wildly. No matter how much has changed, those eyes still remain the same, equal measures of innuendo and adoration. Remus is as helpless to it as ever.

"Haven't we been over this?" he says, unable and unwilling to keep his tone casual. He pushes up from his seat, standing so that he can slide a palm across Sirius' sandpaper jaw, marvelling at the way Sirius trembles beneath his touch. "I always will."

**Author's Note:**

> For the song I took the title from: [No Choir by Florence and the Machine](https://open.spotify.com/track/47a7Hn4fFE4mHgVJF19CO1)


End file.
